Long story short ... everyone wants to do PRS as a pre-med. You catch a few episodes of Nip/Tuck, see Dr. Rey's porsche ... bam I want PRS. The reality though is that to land PRS you must be a ROCKSTAR (MD or DO) and be prepared to not really work until you're mid-late 30s. There was someone on the plastics boards the other day saying that with 5 years of g-surg, a year or so of research to make a better canidate, and three years (all ACGME fellowships are 3 years now, integrated residencies are 6 and I'm sure the AOA PRS fellowships will follow suit soon enough - if funding works), that they were going to be 10 ... TEN years in training.
This doesn't even take into consideration the time it take to build up a good patient base, or building up your own name. Once you get there, be prepared to battle it out for patients, put up with bs 'cosmetic' surgeons invading on your turf, getting hit hard with the economy goes south etc. I personally think plastics is one of the coolest things you can do with that MD/DO behind your name, but a lot of people really want to do it ... meaning a lot of competition, and it takes a longgg time. Moral of the story, go where you want to (in all honesty it's probably easier to land PRS as an MD but unless your da man it's just impossible either way), and keep your mind open ... 99% chance you'll change your mind. Just fyi though, here is a DO PRS guy in Miami. He's one of the big dogs down there and has done all the glamorous TV, magazines etc:
www.aventuracosmeticsurgery.com
(Dr Sam)
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